Northeast Temperate Network (NETN) Rare Woodland and Forest Community Monitoring
Northeast Temperate Network (NETN) Rare Woodland and Forest Community Monitoring.
Monitor status and trends of conditional indicators for selected rare woodland and forest communities in Acadia National Park in order to inform management decisions. Acadia National Park (ACAD) lies within a transition zone of the Maine coastline, containing ecological communities typical of both southwestern and “downeast” coastal Maine. Eleven of these communities, or “associations” as defined within the United States National Vegetation Classification (Jennings et al. 2003), are rare within the state of Maine (Brooke Wilkerson, Maine Natural Areas Program, personal communication), and one is globally rare (Lubinski et al. 2003; see Table 1). The NPS Northeast Temperate Network (NETN) is establishing a long-term forest monitoring program in 10 national park units within the northeastern US. This program is designed to detect trends in forest condition. At ACAD, the network has installed 176 permanent forest plots. This sample size will allow detection of trends in park forests overall, as well as in some specific ecological communities. However, this effort will not yield sufficient sample sizes in rare community associations to assess trends in the condition of these communities. Rare communities are of particular management and conservation interest at ACAD, because they are rare and because they may be particularly sensitive to anthropogenic (human caused) impacts. This protocol was designed to provide data for the assessment of status and trend in rare woodland and forest communities within ACAD, and was adapted from the NETN Long-term Forest Monitoring Protocol. Because these communities are rare in Maine, and are not found in other NETN parks, rare communities will be monitored using a separate sampling frame (i.e., a different series of randomized plots) and modified procedures that are specific to the target communities. However, methods were kept the same between protocols where possible to facilitate data comparison and ensure the forest crew, which will be implementing this protocol, can quickly transition to this protocol. Where methods are the same, we refer the reader to the standard operating procedures in the forest monitoring protocol both to maintain consistency and because the forest crew receives more thorough training on the forest monitoring protocol. Therefore, this rare community protocol is not a stand-alone document, and should be used in conjunction with SOPs in the NETN Long-term Forest Monitoring Protocol.